JURIST Guest Columnist Kami N. Chavis of Wake Forest University School of Law discusses the recent proposals to add police officers to hate crime statutes… In May, the state of Louisiana enacted a law that would make it hate crime to target police, EMS personnel, and firefighters. In light of the recent massacre in Dallas, [...]

North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory on Monday signed into law House Bill 972 , which states that police camera footage, including body camera footage, is not a matter of public record and proscribes the procedure for release of footage. While members of the public are allowed to request the footage if they meet certain criteria, [...]

JURIST Contributing Editor William G. Ross of the Cumberland School of Law at Samford University discusses Justice Ruth B. Ginsburg’s open public opinion concerning Trumps’ candidacy for presidency… Since justices during recent years have been increasingly uninhibited about making extrajudicial comments about a wide range of subjects, it was perhaps only a matter of time [...]

The Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in The Hague ruled in favor of the Philippines Tuesday in a dispute with China over most of the South China Sea. The Philippines brought a case against China in 2013 disputing the latter’s territorial claims. The PCA concluded that China does not have the right to resources within [...]

The Turkish government is blocking access for independent investigations, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report released Monday. HRW claims that the Turkish government is abusing civilians on a massive scale and attempting to cover it up. These alleged abuses include “unlawful killings of civilians, mass forced civilian displacement, and widespread unlawful destruction of [...]

A group of Israeli and American citizens filed a lawsuit in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York on Monday seeking $1 billion in damages from Facebook for allegedly facilitating in Palestinian military attacks. The plaintiffs are relatives of victims who died in attack in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and the West [...]

Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Monday urged Saudi Arabia and other coalition members to create an independent international inquiry into their attacks on civilian economic structures in Yemen. HRW cited its report , “Bombing Businesses: Saudi Coalition Airstrikes on Yemen’s Civilian Economic Structures,” stating that airstrikes have killed 130 and injured 171 civilians and destroyed [...]

Chaloka Beyani , UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons (IDPs), condemned recent attacks on IDPs and civilians in South Sudan Monday. Renewed violence in the capital city of Juba has resulted in the deaths of two Chinese UN Peacekeepers, one UN national staff member and two IDPs. Beyani expressed concern [...]

The Ivory Coast government should make greater efforts to prevent and punish rape, according to a report released Monday by the UN Operation in the Ivory Coast (UNOCI) and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) . The agencies examined data from 2012-2015, documenting 1,129 cases of rape and finding that 66 [...]

The US Department of Defense (DOD) on Monday announced the transfer of two Guantanamo detainees to Serbia. Yemeni detainee Mansur Ahmad Saad al-Dayfi and Tajik detainee Muhammadi Davlatov were transferred to Serbia after extensive review. The transfers come after Sunday’s announcement that Yemeni Guantanamo detainee Fayiz Ahmad Yahia Suleiman had been transferred to Italy . [...]